Heretics

Today, I finally finished 'Heretics'. Though most chapters can be read as single essays, not necessarily read in the context of this book, there is in the end more cohesion then I thought. In chapter 20 Chesterton revisits some concepts he discussed in chapter 1: the importance of general ideals.
The eighteen chapters inbetween discuss various 'heretical' ideas: ideas Chesterton does not agree with. He is dissatisfied with Rudyard Kipling's cosmopolitanism and with Tolstoyan simplicity, with scientific anthropologists and with modern pagans, with 'smart' novelists and with 'slum' novelists.
In the last chapter, then, Chesterton challenges us to 'go upon a long journey and enter on a dreadful search. Let us, at least, dig and seek till we have discovered our own opinions'. We should not be vague about our beliefs; we should not be afraid to examine multiple ideas. We can avoid both extremes of bigotry and fanaticism by becoming people with definite, well-thought, opinions. 'Religious and philosophical ideas are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.'
After reading all these, one does not wonder that Chesterton was challenged to state his own beliefs (which he did in 'Orthodoxy').